Blue_Opossum

Morning of August 13, 1972. Sunday. (Online entry extensively expanded for additional background and clarity and resupplemented on Friday, 1 September 2017.)



This dream, from age eleven and during summer break after completion of fifth grade on June 2nd, occurs in the state of apex lucidity, where my dream self is fully corporeal, including in weight and momentum, with all the physical dynamics and augmented senses as in waking life. In this state, full control can be maintained by the conscious self identity. Since age four, I had been involved in my own continuous experiments with the dream state, including, on some days, several hours of specific affirmations (and other types of preparations) prior to sleep.

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In reality, I am sleeping on my back, my feet southward. The foot and right side of my bed are against walls with tall jalousie windows with the head of my bed being open into my room. The entrance to my room is to my left, on the opposite side of my room. Although it is daylight, my eyes are covered with a pillowcase (of an additional pillow than the one my head is on) from behind my head.

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Surprisingly, there is still some vivid hypnagogia, where I am still able to willingly return to the dream state. The hypnagogic virtual “slideshow” is slow enough to eventually choose the setting that I want to “step into”. However, because it is morning and circadian rhythms dictate that most of my sleep cycle is over, most of the settings (cycling at about one per second) display primarily featureless fields, though there is still the residual essence of water (which symbolizes sleep dynamics and the metaphorical tidal aspects of dreaming that seem to be based more on the glymphatic clearance pathway rather than always correlated with Earth’s tidal dynamics). I step into a setting without surrendering my conscious self identity.

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I step onto slightly damp ground, somewhat marshy and squashy. The grass is nearly up to my knees, though sparse in some areas. I decide to see what would happen if I run with my eyes closed. Would my dream change?

I start happily running barefoot and I feel as if I have a lot of energy. I keep my eyes open for a few minutes. The open field is slightly less marshy over time (the “water lowering” waking symbolism precursor, which has been documented hundreds of times since childhood and still works as such over fifty years later).

I continue to run, now with my eyes deliberately closed, through the slightly muddy grassy field. The marshy ground is bordered by drier ground with denser and shorter grass as I run joyfully, with an incredible sense of freedom and appreciation. The sound changes slowly over time, from my footfalls producing shallow splashes of water (which I find wonderful) to the slaps of drier ground. There are no buildings visible anywhere, including in the distance.

Eventually, I decide to open my dream self’s eyes to see where I am now. Despite the continuous vivid perception up until now of cheerfully running through an open field in mid-afternoon, I now suddenly find myself at the top of a tall ivory tower, looking out over mostly featureless grassy ground. (The tower mostly resembles the Sather Tower, which I have never been inside in reality.) I puzzle over this change. I do not recall running up a winding staircase (or changing direction as such, which would have been required in the implied smaller area) which my present location would seem to indicate (though I do not know what the inside of the Sather Tower is like).

My puzzlement increases and I decide to leave my dream (though remaining curious about the results of my experiment), which I do deliberately by phasing out of my dream self’s body, phasing through the wall of the tower behind my dream self’s body, and flying up and out of my dream (a recurring way I deliberately left the dream state by way of my conscious self identity, more so in my childhood and teenage years).

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In post-hypnopompia, I realize that the tower was the rendering of my emergent consciousness, the symbol of my growing conscious self identity (which is sometimes personified as another character just as the preconscious sometimes is though I was the only dream character in this case), watching over the dream state, which relates to the experiment analogy (just as a person would look over the setup of their experiment). Additionally, there was an influence from Cathy Carr’s recording of “Ivory Tower” (from 1956). I actually feel as if I had been running for a long time, as my legs feel slightly tired (though there is no evidence I had been moving my legs or moving at all in reality).

Despite this dream being a result of apex lucidity, I can relate it to some waking life elements, one prescient. I began sixth grade August 28th (which was to be held in a different building), about two weeks after this dream, thus there may be a “testing” of seeing myself in a higher position. However, there is ambiguity with that concept in that, although my three middle school years (fall 1972-summer 1975) took place in a one-storey building, my earlier grade classes took place on the second floor (though that relates to physical dynamics, not emotional).

In terms of prescience, the specific date marker (which remains unexplainable in terms of what people understand about the perception of time, as same-date prescience occurs far too often to be coincidental) was based on never having been in a tower in real life until much later during a middle school summer break, with my sister Carol (older half-sister on my mother’s side) and her husband Mel, which I had never expected. (I did not even know they would be coming to Florida until about a week before their visit.) This was a journey to the top of the Lake Placid Tower in Florida, which was a wonderful day for me.

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